High-tech startups are shaping the world of tomorrow, striving to make it a better place through innovative technologies. Only a fraction of them is however able to succeed, often because they are unable to take direction and build the requisite customer base to transition to the next stage of the company. A brand strategy can support decisions and bring the customer closer to the startups innovation.
This thesis aims to build a brand for Plense, that supports the early-and later stage development of their innovative technology, leading to a successful market introduction.

To understand Plense, their current sensor prototype and idea about the future, a vision workshop was conducted. To explore the startups context, this thesis studies the most promising customer, industry developments, potential collaborations and competition, through desk research and qualitative interviews with customers.
The findings throughout this discovery phase illustrate Plense’s unique value proposition; a greenhouse integrated co-pilot that provides actionable plant-based data, towards a strategically important customer; the greenhouse ‘business-man’, who decides what happens within the greenhouse business, and their growers, who use technology to control the greenhouse. A key insights and distinction of the business-man is their drive to expand and constantly improve the greenhouse business. The grower is central in this business, and since the growers working pressure increases because of the limited labour force and expertise available, Plense’s co-pilot could support the grower, to focus on what is most important during and after work and therefore support the business-man to explore new opportunities.

The brand DNA for Plense captures these findings with the brand position statement and brand purpose, while the brand personality; exciting, ambitious and reliable translate the brand DNA to the visual appearance incorporated into the redesigned logo, sensor and other brand touchpoints. The brand promise made for Plense summarizes the brand DNA into one central idea communicated towards the customer: ‘your plants in top form’. This promise was evaluated as desired and new towards the business-man and grower and therefore used as basis for the brand building strategy.

To realize this brand promise Plense can only start their brand building strategy when able to communicate their first test results. At that moment targeting the business-man through the personal visits becomes crucial to build the first relationships with the brand and further understand the technology through user tests. Once these user tests show in which way Plense is able to keep plants in top form, Plense is ready to share the brand to the market and all its stakeholders through an interactive horticulture fair stand experience. While bringing the brand and its products to the market, website and newsletters should inform and excite every stakeholder in order to further strengthen the brand image.

This thesis ends with perhaps the most important brand building element for now; internal branding. Making sure the brand which now reflects the outside, the customer, is understood and lived, by making the brand part of the startups daily routine and working together on future brand building activities.

The increasing waiting times in youth mental health care pose a significant challenge, driven by a shortage of specialists and external factors that complicate diagnosis and prolong treatment. Shoshin, a multidisciplinary strategic design and innovation agency, has developed a solution known as the Fit Op Weg Poli (FOWP) to address this issue for adult care at GGZ Delfland. This thesis aims to engage youth healthcare providers in the development of a youth FOWP.

To tackle the design challenge, the double diamond method is applied, involving extensive research and collaborative sessions. This process led to the development of LooS, a co-production framework tailored for young individuals aged between twelve and twenty-seven years old. Co-production for LooS leads to improved service delivery and increased efficiency, aiming to transform youth mental health care.

LooS incorporates several crucial elements to support youth mental health. An easily accessible well-being gym is provided, empowering young individuals to enhance their resilience and overall well-being. A walk-in centre offers a safe and non-judgmental space for peer interaction and support. The intake process involves a comprehensive assessment, and each young person is assigned a dedicated buddy who provides support throughout their recovery journey. Welcome packages are provided to manage expectations and offer essential resources, including e-health tools and information about the recovery process.

Recovery is facilitated through group sessions with a recovery coach, accompanied by the use of e-health tools for progress monitoring and exercises for continued growth. LooS aims to transition 20-30% of clients to a stage where therapy is no longer required, while those who still need therapy will receive specialised group therapy, after recovery.

In the case of a crisis, the program can be scaled up swiftly to provide immediate support. After a crisis, diagnosis-specific therapy will always be provided, and the recovery coach ensures continued aftercare. The aftercare is structured in layers, offering self-testing and a safety net for a smooth transition. Once individuals no longer require aftercare, they bid farewell to their buddy and continue working on their mental resilience in the well-being gym.
LooS is designed to be adaptable for implementation in multiple centres/locations across The Netherlands, allowing for widespread access to youth mental health care.

To support open discussions with healthcare providers, a visual aid called the “Praatplaat” and a brochure have been created. These tools highlight the impact of LooS on the care pathway and waiting times to enable engagement among healthcare providers to co-produce their own LooS centres. A comprehensive blueprint has been developed, providing a clear and structured guide for the co-development process of Shosin with healthcare providers.

In conclusion, LooS is a new approach to youth mental health care, focusing on proactive work on mental resilience, accessible support services, and collaborative engagement. By implementing LooS, the aim is to transform the youth mental health care system, reduce waiting times, and provide holistic care for youth. LooS offers a path towards improved outcomes and well-being, ultimately creating a brighter future for the youth of The Netherlands.

The amount of online training programmes is booming worldwide, especially as the demand has grown during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this growth, the relevance and convenience of online training programmes have been noticed by Bopinc, an innovation agency based in Utrecht which focuses on innovation in low-income countries. Firstly, Bopinc wants to keep up with the rising need for online training in low-income countries by providing online training programmes and the tools so clients can develop it independently by themselves as well. Here the problem is that Bopinc misses the in-house knowledge and tools to provide that. Secondly, Bopinc needs to design an online training programme for a client, Innovectives, in Nigeria. This training programme tackles the lack of vocational skills in agent banking among young Nigerian women.
The thesis uses the design case in Nigeria as design research input for a development guide for online training in low-income countries. From that development guide, a part of the online training programme for the client in Nigeria is designed. The main design approaches to design these deliverables are remote design research and iterative creative problem-solving. Literature research is done from home, succeeded by remote empirical design research with a local partner in Nigeria. This empirical design research consists of collecting observations from practice, formulating design opportunities, creating digital prototyping and testing these by pilot experiments. Concluding from that a selection of promising training methods for the development guide and the online training programme in agent banking is made.
Since the training methods are tested with positive outcomes in the context of Nigeria, which is a low-income country, these are defined as promising. This leads to a basis for the development guide which can be used in future projects by Bopinc’s employees and clients. That means that Bopinc now can design more qualitative online training programmes in less time, with the result that they can help more clients and so impact more low-income consumers’ lives positively, like the design case in Nigeria illustrates.

As the world’s population is constantly growing, there is increased pressure on agricultural food value chains to deliver sustainable food production, distribution, and consumption, forcing core stakeholders in the food value chain (FVC) to change to meet those needs. One of the most significant barriers is a lack of collaboration, which risks staying in a dynamic of incremental innovation, whereas increasing sustainability requires radical innovations and innovative design. A positive chain interdependence can be the key to accelerating sustainable innovation. However, due to the complexity of chain configurations and collaboration models, a lack of interdependence among FVC stakeholders is observed. A holistic chain approach is missing in academic literature to solve that. Furthermore, there is ignorance of stakeholder motives and roles to collaborate. Hence, the first part of this thesis is to solve this literature gap by researching the drivers, barriers, and roles of stakeholders in the FVC collaborating for sustainable transformation. The research results in several outcomes, whereas the lack of trust, leadership and a conservative mindset are the most significant barriers. This project is conducted in close collaboration with Accenture, which wants to position itself in the agri-food industry as a stronger partner, accelerator, and orchestrator for sustainable transitions and innovation ecosystems. Therefore, the overall research question is: How can Accenture accelerate sustainable innovation through stakeholder collaboration in the food value chain? The found barriers are amended into needs where Accenture can play upon to bridge the gap from the research into a potential service the company can offer to the FVC. The final concept is designed for Accenture’s Food of the Future (FotF) capability, which has overlapping ambitions and interests as this thesis aims. The challenge lies in the explore phase, where core stakeholders find it difficult to anticipate their role, incentive, and vision before collaborating with others. Hence, the final deliverable is a service proposition for Accenture that helps the company to get insights into the core stakeholders' values and needs to guide them towards a future-oriented mindset. The designed proposition consists of several elements and is based on the existing participatory backcasting framework and the FutureEquity method of Van Berlo. A blueprint shows three phases: explore, envision, and engage, focusing on the interplay between Accenture and the targeted stakeholder. A redesigned toolkit guides the consultants in creating new content and future scenarios that catalyses the thought process of the stakeholder by exposing the possibilities and dead ends of sustainable innovation on the supported platform. The core stakeholder gets the chance to react, whereas Accenture uses that data to create engagement and traction for a potential innovation ecosystem. Lastly, a roadmap presents the required steps to implement the service successfully into the company. The steps consist of laying down a proper foundation, then launching it for current clients (B2B), whereafter the service becomes a separate entity that reaches core stakeholders (B2B2C). Combining all elements creates a unique proposition for Accenture to catalyse existing and potential FVC clients in the agri-food industry to accelerate sustainable innovation.

With a fleet of 1,9 million vehicles, LeasePlan is the largest player on the lease and fleet management market in the Netherlands as well as worldwide (LeasePlan, 2021). They believe in their Car-as-a-Service strategy that unburdens users with the hassle that comes with the ownership of a car. The fleet of cars and light commercial vehicles is allocated for 73% at corporate client (companies with a fleet >25 vehicles). There is continuous movement in this market segment due to developments such as mobility budgets and total mobility solutions. During the last years, there was much talk around these subjects. However, it was mostly talking without concrete action leading to change. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was felt around the world. The restrictions to our daily lives to contain the virus had far-reaching consequences on how we moved around the last 1,5 years. The number of kilometres driven for business purposes decreased in 2020 by 26% in comparison to the year before (NZMO, 2021). With the lease cars sitting on the driveways, companies were looking to update their mobility policy to facilitate the ‘new normal’ after the pandemic. In the first part of this report, the mobility trends, market movement towards total mobility solutions, LeasePlan and the changing mobility needs of the employer and employee are analysed. The call to create more sustainable and flexible corporate mobility solutions were present in the different analyses. The market is rapidly moving in the direction where the employee chooses between different modalities to travel the needed business kilometres. The direct competitors of LeasePlan are working on total mobility solutions that, next to the traditional lease car, include shared car services, public transport and e-bikes. LeasePlan is currently moving in the same direction with the development of a total mobility solution. The employees are divided in their view towards the lease car. There is a growing group that is actively avoiding the lease car choosing for a cash option even though they are eligible for a lease car. They do not want the rigidity of a four-year contract. The counterpart is the group that uses the lease car for personal mobility needs. When the lease car was stationary for corporate kilometres during COVID-19, it was still regularly being used to drive privately. Using the current strengths of LeasePlan and the insights from the analyses, an ecosystem was designed to transform the lease car into a shared modality. SharedLease is a new proposition that LeasePlan integrates within their future total mobility solution. The new proposition allows colleagues without a lease car to make business kilometres in an appropriate car. The lease car drivers will receive credits when they make the car available to their colleagues. With these credits, they can purchase a vacation car. Solving one of the main reasons employees do not want an electric lease car is range anxiety (Crothers, 2020). In this report, SharedLease is elaborated and the horizon before and after is presented. SharedLease allows LeasePlan to venture towards shared car services while staying within their current Car-as-a-Service strategy. Meanwhile, the changing mobility needs due to the ‘new normal’ after the COVID-19 pandemic are met, giving the employee the needed flexibility.

The high quality public transport network implemented by R-net, short for Randstadnet, follows a product formula on multiple public transport modalities (bus, tram, metro, and train) and acts as a quality mark. R-net is a collaboration between six public transport authorities and nine operators. However, currently R-net is confusing the traveller and losing credibility among its stakeholders. Ultimately, an aligned future vision and collaboration structure is missing. This project creates a future vision, illustrates how R-net should look like in this future and proposes a strategy for how to reach this. In 2040, commuting with the high quality public transport network is the norm. The vision is based on relevant trends and the future fulfilment of the six fundamental needs of the commuter; comfort, autonomy, security, recognition, competence and morality. It presents a seamless door-to-door travel experience integrating different modalities. Three concepts were created to explore how R-net should look like in this future vision. These were combined to the final future role of R-net: B1-net, for a journey without worries. B1-net will be the facilitator for collaboration with the stakeholders in the future high quality public transport network with the help of a mobility roundtable structure. Furthermore, it will provide certainty to the traveller by being in direct contact with them, utilise a certification structure and enable safe data sharing. The communication with the traveller happens via a mascot of a bee. The bee flies along with the traveller in their journey providing this certainty. The experience of the traveller in the vision and concept of the high quality public transport network addresses their fundamental needs and provides certainty. Therefore it will be more attractive and has the possibility to attract more travellers to the network instead of their car. This is beneficial to reach societal goals, like CO2 reduction. For the transition from R-net into B1-net, an organisation strategy is proposed with the help of the analogy of how bees make honey. First, R-net will need to ‘prepare’, collect nectar. A reconstruction will take place to a full-time commitment and the customer service for the traveller is started. This is followed by ‘starting the real process’ which represents how a bee shares its nectar. The public transport authorities are persuaded to join the network and the mobility roundtable is initiated. Hereafter, the honey is capped with beeswax which explains ‘seal the deal’. Public transport operators already connected to R-net are persuaded and the first B1-certificat is allocated. The next step is ‘nurture and expand’, like filling more cells in the honeycomb. This step is about expanding the network and keep revising the requirements for the certificate until in 2040 there is a complete ecosystem of the high quality public transport network. When the honey is ready. The strategy is implemented in a roadmap together with the traveller needs, trends and launch strategy to give a complete overview of how to reach the vision: Commuting with the high quality public transport network is the norm.

This project is executed with and for the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) of the TU Delft. Over the last half-century, IDE’s education for designers has diversified and evolved considerably, in part of art academies and technical education (Voûte et al., 2020). Societal changes, the maturing of design as an academic discipline between science and engineering and international developments of the educational system, have stimulated this growth. Now the faculty is innovating its education again. After innovating the Bachelor, the faculty is starting to look at opportunities to innovate the Master program. The initial assignment of this thesis originated from two observations: the broadening role of the designer and the changing learning behavior of students. The initial assignment includes the investigation of learning experiences that respond to the combination of the two, to investigate opportunities for IDE: design and education. However, innovating in the educational sector is something that is time consuming, with many people involved. And while investigating these new opportunities, the world outside the walls of the faculty is changing constantly by changing much quicker than we think.Based on the research of the context, it appeared that IDE, despite their high-quality education, can already see challenge in keeping its relevancy as well its position as a leader in the education for designers. This is influenced by their limited role in multidisciplinary projects, how to respond to the digital world and the broadening role of the design profession in the working field. Hence, the research question for this thesis is formulated following: What learning experiences are seen as most valuable when entering the world outside IDE and contribute to the preparation of the MSc. student? After the deconstruction of the current context, the future context of both fields of design and education is investigated with the aid of the ViP approach where “opportunities of the future” are investigated. This resulted into a two-dimensional framework, that guides as the future view of the education of the designer that was evaluated with the core competencies of design to investigate the value of possible directions that resulted into the design focus. That consisted of three different design visions resulting in three different design directions including a statement, interaction vision and experience qualities. Within the interaction visions, the relationship between an IDE student and its education were designed. Three learning experience concepts were developed and combined into a whole new Master experience of IDE that transforms the traditional structure. In short, the new Master experience includes learning experiences that focus on the individual in the whole (1), creating reciprocal learning relations (2) and aims to increase the value of designers in multidisciplinary teams (3). As this learning experience is designed from an envisioned future, supported by extensive stakeholder research and the student’s needs, it would contribute to Master innovation by offering these learning experiences that are perceived as valuable in the transformation from design student to a design professional. Also, a first validation round is held over the whole Master experience including the learning experience concepts, where the experiences were critically but positively validated. The developed final experience next to additional learnings in this thesis derived from exploring the future, made that focusing on preparing design students to work with other disciplines equally and going beyond the traditional design discipline of IDE, should be main concerns of the faculty. The design process of this thesis puts light on designing the initial interaction between students and IDE, that resulted in more recommendations. This included a focus on the wellbeing of the design student next to the future role of educators as things to take highly into account when innovating in the design education of IDE.

The currentpublic Dutch transport tariff system is complex and difficult to understand forthe passenger. It is assumed that passengers feel like they are not getting the“best price”, but do not have the means to validate this. Furthermore, there isa large offer of tickets and subscriptions available which can lead toinsecurity for the passenger.   The Dutchpublic transport is provided by several carriers and organized in adecentralized manner. The OV-chipcard is the main payment method within thesystem. The current tariff system of the Dutch public transport works with astarting rate and a kilometre rate. The starting rate is determined nationally,while the kilometre rate differs per region and/or carrier.   The landscape of Dutch public transport ischanging. Firstly, within the coming years, the OV-chipcard will be replacedwith a new system where the price calculations will happen in a back officeinstead of at the card readers. The introduction of this new system is a greatmoment to revise the tariff system. In addition, multiple new forms of (shared)mobility are appearing which, together with the current public transport,create a Mobility as a Service landscape.   Assignment Creating a roadmap to implementthe ideal passenger-oriented tariff system for public (and shared) transport inthe Netherlands.   The goal of thisproject was to develop a user-centred solution to improve the experience of thetraveller concerning the tariff system of the Dutch public transport, and otherforms of shared transport. The solution will consist of changes in thetariff system and will consist of short- and long-term developments. The futurevision (ideal passenger-oriented tariff system) and steps towards this visionwill be combined into a roadmap.   SeamlessPersonal Mobility Lab Thisgraduation project is executed within the Expertisecentre for User-CentredMobility Services, one of the projects of the Seamless Personal Mobility Lab,which is one of the Delft Design Labs of the faculty of Industrial DesignEngineering.   This graduation projectwas preceded by a research project, an international benchmark was conducted tomap the pros and cons of different public transport tariff systems. Duringthis benchmark, the different systems were compared on, among others, priceawareness, transparency, ticketing and pricing. The benchmark was conducted inAntwerp, South Tyrol, London, and Helsinki.   Results During this project, a strategicroadmap, visual roadmap and implementation cardset were designed and created.Within the roadmaps short- and long term developments are defined to leadtowards the ideal passenger oriented public transport tariff system.   The future vision is defined as: In thefuture, all passengers should be confident about and in control of theirspendings on public transport. Therefore there should be a unified andtransparent tariff system that is adopted by all carriers. Additionally,carriers and other mobility providers should cooperate to offer the passengerpersonalized and all-inclusive travel products for the best price.   The roadmaps, combined with theimplementation cardset, offer a user-centred solution and are a great source ofinspiration for the current developments within public transport.    

The start of this project is a first version of a serious game that was designed by the company MEDD. This is an independent design and consultancy agency for healthcare. They designed this game as part of their ‘Met Elkaar Durven Doen’ toolbox, which they use in trainings and workshops. The Haga Hospital is the co-design partner of the game, and during the week of patient safety, a first version of this prototype was played by healthcare professionals of the Haga Hospital. The main aspect of the game are the question cards. These cards are divided into three themes: Patient Experience, Risk Management, and Culture and Behaviour. Within these themes, the players get knowledge based questions, questions to discuss, or small assignments. In a questionnaire done by MEDD in the Haga Hospital and through the reactions of the healthcare professionals that played the game, can be concluded that these three themes are themes that healthcare professionals would like to learn more about. The assignment within this project is to further develop the existing design and make it applicable to other hospitals and healthcare organisations. The Safety Game is meant to create awareness and a deeper knowledge an understanding of safety and quality within hospitals. To provide background to why this is necessary, a literature review and field research are done. From this research can be concluded that an open culture is important to manage risks in the hospital. Unfortunately, most hospitals have a blame culture, where healthcare professionals don’t correct each other or speak up in fear of the consequences. To change this blame culture into an open culture, the behaviour of the healthcare professionals needs to change. To make healthcare professionals aware of their type of culture and how to change this, a serious persuasive game can be used. To design this serious persuasive game, the Persuasive Game Design model is used. The research provided the insights to fill in the Real World Experience and the Gamification Design. From the research the goal was defined: Designing a meaningful, serious, persuasive game for healthcare professionals to gain lasting awareness on their behaviour regarding safety and how they influence their own safety and that of others. In the ideation phase, three concepts were developed. From these three, a concept was chosen that is based on the idea of an escape room idea. The final design consists of a small house that represents the hospital, a patient card, question cards in the earlier mentioned themes, a padlock to lock the hospital, three puzzles in the same themes as the question cards, and puzzle pieces. This design is tested in the Haga Hospital with healthcare professionals. The final design, the game ‘Cultuur rondom Veiligheid’, is proven to create awareness regarding culture and behaviour, and how this influences (patient) safety, thus reaching the design goal. The base of the final design can be used to be adjusted to fit other healthcare organisations or keep the game up to date by MEDD.

Speech is the most natural and most comfortable method of communication for most people (Tadeusiewicz, 2010). So why not use speech for digital communications between company and customers? This graduation assignment aimed to examine this by questioning how voice technology could possibly enhance the dialogue between TUI and its customers.

Voice technology is a rather new technology and has not been fully adopted yet by the public. It was found that the technology should be implemented in gradual steps. This way, company and customer can get used to the technology. Also, starting off small and simple enables stimulation of the adoption (Rogers, 1995).

The Brand Driven Innovation model (Boeijen et al., 2013) was used to structure this project and in order to maintain a high focus on the relationship between company and customer. It was found that the company could highly improve the information it provides to the customer throughout their journey. Within the entire customer journey, the “prepare to go” phase was chosen as a scope due to it not being of critical harm to the rest of the journey. After all, the technology is relatively new and, therefore, brings some risks with it.

Experiments aimed at validating assumptions showed that customers are looking for information while preparing for their journey. They are mainly interested in obtaining information about activities (excursions) and dining options (e.g. restaurants). A link with Musement was made, a company that was acquired by TUI and is designed around providing information about both activities and dining options. The voice-based solution, therefore, consists of an integration of the current Musement voice application into one that suits the purpose of TUI and was named the TUI Tour Guide 1.0.

As said, the technology needs gradual implementation and therefore a stepping stone (MVP) was designed: Holiday Trivia. A voice application with which users can learn what type of vacationer they are and obtain holidays and deals tailored to their vacationer type. This stepping stone was designed using a process tree flow to structure the dialogue, which highly limited the errors in the conversation as was found by user tests.

Both Holiday Trivia and the Musement integration (TUI Tour Guide 1.0) are steps towards the future vision, in which a TUI voice-based tour guide provides information along the entire journey in a personal and transparent way. In order to get there, a roadmap has been established in which the voice-based application is expanded step by step.

The Dutch government has decentralised many welfare state tasks to municipalities, because social support is best given at a local level, close to the people who need the support (Rijksoverheid, n.d.). However, for Dutch municipalities this means more responsibilities with less resources and consequently a different, more collaborative way of working. Moreover, it creates a participation society where municipalities have to rely more on the self-reliance of their citizens (Gemeente Etten-Leur, 2014). Municipalities are therefore often looking for ways to improve the social cohesion in neighbourhoods (Steenhuis, 2010). This is where Eco-Units wants to make a difference. Eco-Units is a social enterprise that explores the opportunities of reusing shipping containers in the public outdoor space. The concept that is explored in this project is to develop a container (meeting place) that improves the social cohesion in neighbourhoods. Social cohesion is often a romantic view of villages in the past, where everybody knew each other and took care of each other. Therefore, social cohesion is better defined in this thesis. It does not only refer to the horizontal interaction (among groups and individuals in society), but also to the vertical interaction (between government and society). These interactions can be characterized by for example the participation of individuals (J. Chan, To & E. Chan, 2006). From (field) research in the first phase, it was concluded that there is not one prefabricated solution for all cities and neighbourhoods, because improving the social cohesion asks for a different strategy in every neighbourhood. So, the design goal was specified as: designing a development tool kit for Eco-Units to be able to develop a Unit that stimulates social cohesion in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, in co-creation with local stakeholders and citizens. Therefore, a framework was developed that shows the step that are necessary to develop a container that stimulates social cohesion. Different stakeholders are involved from the start and for citizens a feeling of ownership of the Eco-Unit will be created in the process. The framework starts by finding the right stakeholders to collaborate with and creating trust between these stakeholders. The next phase it to create trust between the stakeholders and citizens, by involving the citizens in the design process. First needs of citizens are identified and then the actual Eco-Unit is co-designed. In the last phase citizens will get more responsibilities and therefore trust is created between citizens. The framework visualises the steps that are needed.From the proposed framework, a tool kit was developed. Each step has its own tool or a list of recommendations to carry out the step. The tools were prototyped and the tools for step 2 and step 5 were tested. Moreover, the tools were discussed with Eco-Units. Lastly, suggestions have been made on to better define the corporate identity.